Citizens Committee Elections Called Unfair : Redevelopment: Two council members cited the practice of allowing only those on the advisory panel to vote for candidates.

Two Los Angeles City Council members on Monday said they don’t like the way people are being picked for a citizens panel that helps guide the city’s efforts to renovate deteriorating neighborhoods in North Hollywood.

After one critic said it was easier for blacks to vote in the South during the segregation era, Councilman Richard Alatorre said he was putting city redevelopment officials “on notice that I’m not satisfied that this election was conducted properly.”

Alatorre referred to a Feb. 13 election to fill seats on the North Hollywood Project Area Committee, which advises the city’s powerful Community Redevelopment Agency as it attempts to reinvigorate North Hollywood.

Councilwoman Gloria Molina didn’t go that far, but urged postponement of another election set for tonight to fill 12 vacancies on the citizens committee. Molina was particularly uncomfortable with rules that permit only current board members to vote to fill vacancies. “It just seems odd,” she said.

She believes that a wide range of residents and property owners ought to be allowed to vote.

But the lawmakers, acting in their capacity as members of the council’s Community Redevelopment and Housing Committee, were told they had limited authority to correct problems they saw, because these community-level organizations operate independently of the council.

An aide to Council President John Ferraro, who represents North Hollywood, told the committee that her boss wants tonight’s elections to proceed, as does Don Spivack, a top redevelopment agency official.

Spivack said the committee currently does not have enough members for a quorum, which hampers its ability to advise the Community Redevelopment Agency on several pending projects, including a proposed Vineland-Magnolia shopping center, he said. “If we don’t have an election, the community won’t have a voice,” Spivack said.

The North Hollywood committee’s elections have been enmeshed in controversy since February when the panel began trying to fill numerous vacancies.

In March, one election effort was aborted after a scuffle broke out at a committee meeting. A brief arm-wrestling match broke out again at Monday’s meeting between CRA critic Howard O. Watts and the council committee’s sergeant-at-arms, after Molina told Watts to stop verbally attacking the city staff. Watts finally sat down.

Critics contend that the citizens committee is merely a tool of the CRA and business interests seeking to capitalize on the redevelopment project.

Attorney Chris Sutton, who represents the dissidents, said the committee failed to adequately notify affected people of the February election and then made the rules for qualifying to vote so onerous it was difficult for anyone but insiders to win.

“It’s more difficult to vote in a PAC election in Los Angeles than it was for a black to vote in Mississippi in 1965,” Sutton told the committee.

But Spivack, deputy administrator for the CRA, said the Project Area Committee election in February was legal and that tonight’s election would meet the requirements of both state law and the committee’s own bylaws.

Ada Klevans, chairwoman of the PAC, called the committee’s critics “naysayers” who are spewing “garbage.” They are free to get elected to the PAC, she said.

Tonight’s meeting is to be held at the First Baptist Church, 11210 Otsego St., North Hollywood. Potential candidates may register starting at 6:30 p.m. The regular meeting starts at 7.